Well, it wouldn't even have been fifteen minutes. More like 20 seconds, tops. But specifically, today I've had to resist the desire to be quotable.

Currently there's a missing child situation going on near where I used to live and work as a reporter. A three-year-old boy has gone missing. His parents found his bed empty yesterday morning, and a day-long and overnight search has turned up nothing.

The police have listed a suspect in the case, a local guy who has been convicted of several break and enters. He was once accused of kidnapping a child, but the charges were dropped because it turned out that one of the child's parents had hired him to do it.

A little over a year ago he was involved in a situation in my town, where I did reporting. He was found squatting at a cabin, and had hundreds of pieces of stolen property with him from around the area, from vehicles to batteries to appliances and more. He apparently attempted to destroy the cabin when he was caught, leaving propane tanks on inside and starting the stove, but that didn't work. Police discovered a large number of items of a sexual nature inside the cabin.

I did a story on it at the time. I was told details about the items that were inside the cabin, but those details were given to me unofficially and I didn't include them in the story, nor will I include them here.

But now that police are looking for this guy in the new missing child case, all the big name media from across Canada are doing stories and investigating, and they all want juicy details. I just received a call from Mi-Jung Lee, a semi-famous news anchor in Vancouver (she has played a news anchor in a number of movies as well, including Tron Legacy, Watchmen, and X-Men 2 and 3). She wanted details, and pressed me on whether or not there had been pictures of children inside the cabin. Fishing for a nice juicy tidbit to go along with their news coverage.

The fact that she had tracked me down (I've changed my phone number since leaving that job) suggests that she really wanted that information. Obviously the police in my former town must not have told her, which suggests that the information is not yet public (the court case may still be ongoing).

And honestly, I don't recall for certain if there were pictures of children inside the cabin. I remember some other things that were in there, and they were creepy enough. The news anchor would be salivating over that information.

But I was told that information off the record. Even though I no longer work at that job, and even though the person who told me has since moved on to a different position, and even though the thought of being quoted in a big national news story is exciting, I told her that I couldn't remember. She gave me her number so I could call back if I did. But I'm not going to call her back.

I hope they find the boy, and I hope that either this guy isn't involved or he gets locked away for a long time at last if he is, but getting my 15 minutes won't help either of those outcomes. Still, all in all, that was a very unexpected and interesting phone call.

If you were me, would you have told the reporter what she wanted to hear?